This image of delicious berries embedded in ice cubes is circulating the Internet without a source, but it’s inspiring people all over Pinterest to make fruity cubes for freshening up their water.

However, you might recall another berry/ice combo that turned into bungled blueberry cubes, so you can probably see where this is going…

Once again we see a blueberry-splosion, this time brought to us by Morgan on her Instagram account, @iwishihadapenguinfriend. After out last brush with berry cubes I assumed blueberries just couldn’t be frozen (since the inspiration for those turned out to be a completely different kind of fruit), but the unnamed cube-maker from our inspiration photo seems to have found success. So what’s the secret??? If anyone out there knows, please share – I’m starting to get seriously thirsty for some un-exploded blueberries.

I would assume the pressure of the water turning to ice around the fresh blueberries squashed their insides out before the blueberries themselves could freeze. Maybe the trick is to start with already-frozen blueberries. Probably from a bag. None of this stuff from the farmer’s market.

I think the water is freezing faster than the berries, putting pressure on them, hence the explosion. I might try freezing the blueberries on their own first, then putting in ice cube trays with water and freezing into cubes. We freeze blueberries all the time in their container and they freeze great.

I’m assuming that the sugars in the blueberries cause them to freeze more slowly than the water of the cubes, and when the water surrounding them expands into their personal space, they get squeezed out into those fun little tubes of blueberry-guts. So freezing them before you drop them into the ice cube tray is probably the secret, yeah!

I think it’s a two-prong process. Start the ice cubes freezing before hand, then add frozen blueberries. Blueberries are small, and I can see 1 or 2 blueberries being thawed by the water’s ambient temperature before it gets cold enough to become ice. Also, why would one bother with this, other than the visual effect? Just having berries floating in your water doesn’t add much flavor, in my experience.